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I think I'm going to give up 30 3, and pick something else. I may regret this(actually I'm pretty sure I will), but think I want to learn something faster. 30 3 isn't too bad (which is why I originally picked it hehehe) if someone wants to give it a go. I'll know what I want by next Tuesday.

I would like to share ideas on learning these. Also I'm wondering where people are on the spectrum from "knew my selection already, just need to brush it up" through "challenging, but I've played similar works before" all the way to "this is going to be by far the hardest piece I've ever learned" (that's me).

My approach to learning is first to work out the fingering for the whole piece, and then to focus on small parts at a time. Sometimes I work back to front. For this one I think I'll adopt Richard's suggestion of working on four measures at a time (the piece is mostly in six measure phrases, in subunits of two measures, so four will cross six in a curious but not insane way, so it seems as reasonable approach as any).

Actually the very very first step I usually do is play through a piece very slowly, HT, a few times, to get a feel for it. This may be bad in terms of allowing my fingers to taste the dread Wrong Fingering and Mistaken Notes, but this is what I do. Someday I'll experiment with starting a piece more cautiously.

The other thing I do at some point, and with this piece I'm doing it at the beginning before working out the fingering, is analyze the piece harmonically and thematically. (I'm doing analysis exhaustively first on this piece because I'm waiting on an edition I've ordered that claims to have fingering and I want to try that before investing too much time and muscle memory in a home-grown possibly inferior fingering. Yes, I know, different hands, adapt the fingering, etc etc, but I still like starting with published fingering because I usually find in it some clever solution to some particularly tricky puzzles.)

The thematic analysis has shown me the structural outlines of the piece. The harmonic analysis has gotten me to look very closely and see where similar melodic phrases are harmonized differently, meaning I have to be sure to come up with separate fingering for each one. It has also shown me some places where a harmony is continued from beat to beat and thus might affect my choice of pedaling. But I'm not sure how much the harmonic analysis will affect my playing. I think I'm going to be challenged just to get the right notes, voice the melody, shape the phrases with the indicated dynamics, and if I'm doing really well make audible the few different articulations that are notated. Plus do all of that at something resembling Andante Walking Pace rather than Snail's Pace. (I was heartened by the fact that Barenboim's recording took this at a slower pace than I would have expected, so an artistically reasonable tempo is in reach for me, I hope.)

I haven't mentioned expression, pedaling, articulation, dynamics, rubato, etc. as separate steps because I think I'll be working on all of those as I work through it a few measures at a time. Something I learned from listening to the Satie themed recital is that I need to learn to be MUCH more expressive, even within the limited range of a Satie Gymnopedie. How much more expression will be required in a broad-ranging Romantic (or at least on-the-verge-of-Romantic) Song.

I'd love to hear others' thoughts on learning these pieces.

I wouldn't have taken on my piece without the 3 months or so allotted to the recital, it's one of the more difficult I've tried although the metronome marking for it is a heck of a lot slower than e.g. Barenboim takes it so that will mitigate somewhat. At least I have a choice and I love 67,2 at both medium or brisk.

In recording, unless I'm playing something relatively simple, I tend to tense up as I approach the end - that's especially true when I've made a good start as there's then more at stake. For that reason I jumped, soon after starting, to the last page and that will get a periodic (extra) work-out while honing up the rest of the piece. That'll help me relax when it comes time to record.

Other than what I hear intuitively in the way of form, harmonic analysis would serve me no purpose but I can see how systematically breaking down a structure can help provide a road map for some.

Memorise in small musical units, complete or half-complete morsels. Zone in on the smallest neighbourhood - as little as 2 beats - of a persistent problem and try and form a playable loop. Repeat until confident then gradually expand the loop to take in more of the leading and trailing notation.

At the outset I only pay attention to fingering (so, so important as a cue) and note lengths. Without going out of my way to avoid expression I never consciously attend to it (speed or volume) until the notes of the entire piece are reasonably confident at which point I have my blank canvas.

At the outset I only pay attention to fingering (so, so important as a cue) and note lengths. I would never bother with expression (speed or volume) until the notes are second nature at which point I have my blank canvas.

Excellent post, dire tonic. Each paragraph has impact and importance on this recital and is worth re-reading. This last one is especially worth paying attention to. I've recently discussed this with another on this forum who prefers to tend to one thing at a time and this method fits into it nicely.

My own preference is to memorise the piece in my head after audiating from the score (my blank canvas) and frequently singing it to myself so my interpretation is formed as a perfect idea before I sit down to the piano, uncluttered by the imperfections thrown up by my fingers, and I consequently pay attention to every last detail of each snippet before I move on. It's not for everyone.

Also I agree that a harmonic analysis in lyrical pieces like these is less important than a melodic one especially if the phrases aren't marked in. Performers whose intuitive ability is not backed up with as much experience might spend a little time looking where the phrases stop and start and use this to break the piece into musically integral units rather than just two or three bars arbitrarily.

Thinking about what dire tonic and Richard have said, as I've been practicing memorizing my Clementi Sonatina, I have discovered that I definitely want to learn the dynamics and articulation as I'm learning the fingering, which is to say, learn them all at the same time as I'm working initially on the piece in morsels. I mention this as coming from work on Clementi, but everything I'm learning about memorizing will be very applicable to my work on my Mendelssohn Song Without Words for this themed recital. (Richard, you have convinced me to tackle memorizing my Mendelssohn.)

Now, in working on a morsel I will probably get the fingering first, and then work on the expression. But I want to have memorized the expression before I move on to the next morsel. This is because the expression as indicated in the score may not be what I would myself think of as obvious for the piece (and this is even more true for the Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, with their sudden dynamics changes), so if I don't learn them on the first pass, then I have to go through a second time with a whole new layer of learning the notated expression.

Also I am finding that I need practice in swelling and shrinking a phrase, and it's good for me to get that practice from the very beginning, rather than spend a lot of time learning to play without expression. I want all my playing to have expression, and there's no reason to artificially cut my practice time for expression in half by ignoring expression for the whole first part of my learning.

As I get the piece very comfortably under my fingers, I expect I will be able to put even more expression into it, so in that sense I don't have the final expression from the very beginning. Also as I get more familiar with the piece, I will find new nuances of expression I want to put into it. But I will have the outlines of the notated expression from the very beginning.

More thoughts from thinking about dire tonic's and Richard's posts: Harmonic analysis is the first analytical tool I learned, so it is always my first thought on looking at a piece. I am learning from Richard's prodding how to do other types of analysis, and I agree that melodic analysis is particularly important in a Song Without Words, for example to give ideas for how to shape the phrases.

But things I learn from harmonic analysis of a piece include:

It gets me to look very closely at all the notes. Then I branch off into looking at patterns in the notes in other ways than harmonically. Other people might have other ways of getting up close and personal with the notes, but for me harmonic analysis gives me that starting point.

It tells me things about the phrases, like where they begin and end, or where a phrase ends on an unsettled chord and only resolves with the first note of the next phrase, which tells me something about possible interpretation. Other people can probably hear things like this easily, and don't need to do the formal analysis, but for me the harmonic analysis gives me big clues about what to listen for that might otherwise elude me for a long time. I suppose I could practice just listening, and learning to hear these things without the formal analytic clues, but honestly that listening seems to proceed so slowly for me. (Example: the radio played a clip of Ira Gershwin singing something from Porgy and Bess. The announcer warned that he was off-key at the beginning, but that the clip got better after the start. Well. Ha. I couldn't hear any off-keyness at all, it all sounded just fine to me.)

Beyond just phrase endings, but also internally within phrases, in listening to these Songs Without Words, I don't hear any obvious "this is a normal harmony, this is an unusual harmony" cues that I hear in the Clementi Sonatinas we were working with over on the Analysis thread. So I don't know what that's all about, but it means that I still want the formal harmonic analysis to match up with what I hear and try to figure out what harmonic effects Mendelssohn is using and what they sound like.

I mentioned that the harmonic analysis might tell me things about possible interpretation, but then again, maybe not. Here's another example: I was playing Gurlitt's Little Flower for my teacher last year, and she said "that sounds just like a little flower." Well. Ha. I hadn't been thinking about making it sound like a little flower at all. I'd been thinking purely technically about adding Romantic expression: big swells and diminuendos in the phrases, expressive rubato at the phrase ends, big forte's where indicated. And my impression after my exhaustive harmonic analysis of my Mendelssohn Song Without Words left me thinking that a similar thing is true here too: pay attention to the dynamics and other technical issues, and the harmonic effects will emerge all by themselves from the notes that Mendelssohn has chosen, without any need to emphasize them further. (The one exception where harmonic analysis might influence my interpretation would be finding the tension chord(s) just before a resolution, and hanging on them a bit longer. Or conversely, sinking deeply into the resolution itself. This is the kind of choice that I won't know until I can play the piece, albeit slowly, and can practice listening to the different choices. I can't audiate well enough to decide on these things just from reading the score away from the piano.)

This is different from for example Bach's Prelude in C where my dynamic interpretation is intimately linked to the harmonic analysis, emphasising the strange chords and relaxing on the plain chords. (I'm not sure if Richard would agree with this approach to expression in that Prelude, since when we analyzed it he had an entirely different way of understanding its structure.)

Specifically from doing harmonic analysis on Romantic pieces (Schubert over on the Analysis thread, Mendelssohn here), I am learning to expand my understanding of harmonic vocabulary beyond the Baroque and Classical harmony that is all I have studied before now. By going through note by note and chord by chord, I'm really absorbing some of the new things the Romantics are doing with chromaticism. I like knowing about these things, rather than just seeing a score and the composer's choices as a mass of notes with the only things I can say about them being "this is for colour" or "this is for effect". What I've seen so far in the composers I've studied, including Schubert and Mendelssohn, is that they choose their harmonies and chromatics according to very careful principles; they're not just a random set of notes set down any old way that happen to sound good. As I move forward in time beyond the early Romantics, I expect to start learning more and more about the ways that successive composers stretched the harmonic envelope step by step.

Alright I'm dedicated to 53 #4 then. Now if you have suggestions on managing the huge chords in the first few measures I'd appreciate the creativity.

Have you made any headway on this, Wisebuff? I can offer some suggestions but all are a compromise.

Yes I'm making headway but still find I need to leave out the lower F in measure 2 in order to maintain the melody in the right hand. I'll see my teacher tomorrow and she may have a better suggestion. I'm still working through the first page and the first four measures are the most difficult as far as fingering. Any suggestions are welcome.

Wayne is up to the end of bar 8 now, but it's still real slow, I don't know wether to continue to the next bar 9 and 10 tomorow, or take a break and work solely on these first 8 bars till they're perfectish?

If you've done to bar 8, Wayne, you have done up to bar 10! You've also got the technique for 10-14, 22-30 and 41-45 after you've accommodated those nasty subtle changes.

Personally I would drop these bars and let them assimilate for a while. Your attention should first be on 14-18, then 18-22, 30-34 and 34-41. I would spend a week on each of these sections in isolation then a fortnight to combine each pair taking you to the middle of January (assuming you continue over Christmas).

In middle to late Jan you can return to these simpler sections (you might use weekends to keep them in your head and use half-bar sections to work up some tempo).

By mid Feb you should be ready to think about joining these sections and control the tempo with a metronome. When you're free of hesitations at about 50-60 bpm for minims you should be able to let the tempo come up quite quickly to whatever feels comfortable for you (and keeps you mistake free).

There's absolutely no point letting mistakes in anywhere here just to have it ready in time for a recital. Get it right and use whatever tempo you're up to for the recital. No-one's going to be upset by a slower tempo but will you be happy recording errors?

Wayne is up to the end of bar 8 now, but it's still real slow, I don't know wether to continue to the next bar 9 and 10 tomorow, or take a break and work solely on these first 8 bars till they're perfectish?

If we are to play these mid February my strategy is to have the whole thing under my fingers by mid January. That means a new measure every day attending to dynamics and fingering and hoping that the previous measures begin to feel comfortable (perfectish feels pretty out there right now). Then with the whole in my head I hope to smooth it out and get it ready for performance. I was up to six measures today but the first two are tough ones and not as beautiful as they could be.

Mid February is the ABF Recital. I don't think we'll clash with that so would allow at least another month to mid March before this goes ahead.

If it's any help, try dropping the RH accompaniment in the first measures and just play the LH with the RH melody and make it sound beautiful before adding the rest of the RH. It gives you something to aim for instead of hoping to hear it right. You might try it all the way up to measure 9. That's a beautiful melody.

Does anyone know...is there a trick to using the pedal to make the passages legato? For now I'm focusing on the first part. Even just looking at bars 1 and 2. Both the left and right hand play triplets for accompaniment, and then the right hand also has to play the melody. The melody is played with my 5th finger RH, but it is marked legato. Initially I was trying to hold on to those melody notes with my pinky while I was playing the triplets with the rest of the fingers on my right hand, but it was causing pain in my hand so I have to use the pedal to do it. however i just can't seem to get it. Barenboim makes it sound so lovely and legato, but mine sounds either choppy or smudged.

Op.31/1 is a very hard piece. This is the case when played both at low and high speed. At several places you will have to play a two-against-three rythm with your right hand. And the general challenge is to bring out the melody along with the triplets of the two middle voices. I use quite rapid action with the pedal when I play this piece myself, but I have to admit that I have never been able to bring it up to a high artistic level.

Does anyone know...is there a trick to using the pedal to make the passages legato? For now I'm focusing on the first part. Even just looking at bars 1 and 2. Both the left and right hand play triplets for accompaniment, and then the right hand also has to play the melody. The melody is played with my 5th finger RH, but it is marked legato. Initially I was trying to hold on to those melody notes with my pinky while I was playing the triplets with the rest of the fingers on my right hand, but it was causing pain in my hand so I have to use the pedal to do it. however i just can't seem to get it. Barenboim makes it sound so lovely and legato, but mine sounds either choppy or smudged.

Don’t injure yourself! Use sustain as liberally as needed but aim to use the suggested fingering. Often as not you’ll find a lot of it will fall under your fingers and give you your legato.

I’ve only looked at the first few bars but there are a couple of things to note. Heavy use of the pinky but also use 4 to enhance legato for example between Ab and Bb in bar 2.

Quite a bit of finger swapping going on in the melody (e.g. Eb in bar 3 and C in bar 4). Is the fingering marked in your score?

In bar 2, just after the Ab melody note, the RH G should be played by the LH together with the Bb. That's going to give the RH some vital independence. Is that marked in your score? If not I can point you to a better edition.

Alright I'm dedicated to 53 #4 then. Now if you have suggestions on managing the huge chords in the first few measures I'd appreciate the creativity.

Have you made any headway on this, Wisebuff? I can offer some suggestions but all are a compromise.

Yes I'm making headway but still find I need to leave out the lower F in measure 2 in order to maintain the melody in the right hand. I'll see my teacher tomorrow and she may have a better suggestion. I'm still working through the first page and the first four measures are the most difficult as far as fingering. Any suggestions are welcome.

Looking at bar 2, I’m assuming your score indicates the top A in the LH chord should be played with the RH? I’d say my hands are a tad smaller than average but I can do a fingertip 10th with the LH, a fraction less with the RH. So in bar 2 I can take on the bass clef 10th chord entirely providing I omit the middle F. Also in the RH, I can just manage the fingertip 9th with B nat. at the top. Are either of those intervals within your reach? If so, you can juggle the responsibility for those extreme notes without losing too much of the richness in the harmony.

For the chord with the C melody – unless you can do the LH fingertip 10th - you’d have to drop the bottom F as you’ve already suggested but that’s fairly transient and not too big a sacrifice.

Hope that’s of use. I’d be very interested to know what your teacher suggests.

Thank you dire tonic for the fingering suggestions! It helps, and no my score was not marked like that. I practiced it that way today and it sounded much better (using the fourth finger on the Ab and then using the LH only on the triplets in that particular spot). Perhaps there are other places in the score where I can use the LH where I was trying to use the right. I wonder if it is ok to play the triplets not so much legato but in a shorter fashion?

Ganddalf, I agree this is a challenging piece! I won't get it to any high artistic level either before this recital, or possibly ever. but I'll do the best I can. Some places where the RH plays the melody and the triplets, it is challenging to bring out the melody note while keeping the other softer. With the 2 against 3, I had started studying Debussy's First Arabesque just before I picked up this piece, so I think that helped me a lot with it. I don't think my use of the pedal is as rapid as it could/should be yet, because I haven't been sure how to do that and maintain the legato in a way that also doesn't hurt my hands. It seems alternative fingering though will help a lot so I'll continue to sort that out.

- has a lot in common but sometimes there’s an alternative.In fact it was this latter I looked at first when pondering Valencia’s impossible stretch. Here it’s bracketed but in the Ditson edition the G is written on the correct stave.

jdw, I agree, these swaps are not always necessary or even advantageous but I usually experiment with them to see if they might help. Your fingering works fine for me, those particular swaps seem fussy. I’ve not looked at the others.

Fortunately we’re not delivering this recital till early spring so for trouble spots we can afford to spend a little time looking at alternatives, maybe devising our own, giving each of them a chance to bed in, or not.

Wayne, if you’re reading this, when I was practising the 85,2 you’ve now taken over, I found the 3,5 finger swap at the beginning of bar 3 to be a better alternative at speed than jumping straight to 5. Check out the Ditson if you're not already using it.

Yep I'm here I've just been making the fingering up as I go along so to speak, as long as it's comfortable and the next notes are easy to get to, I thought that should be ok. If I get time, I'll record a vid later and show you what I'm doing, then you could point out any improvements I could make. Cheers everyone

There's still empty seats, I hope others are going to join in Come on you lurkers, pick a piece, it's fun and a learning experience rolled into one Not to mention the sense of acheivement when the recital gets posted up

It’s ok up to a point, fairly logical. The upper line of the RH (excluding the intermediate answering notes) should be legato and you’ll compromise that to some extent where you have F down to D (5,5), C to B (4,4) and E to C (5,5). Also it depends on the tempo. At medium to slow there may not appear to be much difference between ‘good’ and ‘better’ fingering – it might only become apparent at a faster tempo. You’ve got bigger hands than me if you’re happy going from B up to E with 4,5 although Ditson uses that. I used 3,5.

The LH is broadly ok but then it’s not working nearly as hard.

I would recommend spending at least an hour persevering with the ditson fingering on the RH alone - just those 4 bars - and seeing what you think. If you’ve not done finger swaps before it’ll seem a bit weird but when you get used to it it’s like a glide – quite satisfying.